CHINA, NATIONAL, POPULAR CULTURE, Analysis: “Korea Wave” Catches China Off Guard

By Lou Li

Song Feifei, an office lady who is well accustomed to her workday from nine to five, recently found her life in a total mess. She was late for work several times, which had never happened to her before. "It is all Dae Jang Geum's fault. I watch it every day till midnight. Then it is hard for me to get up the next morning."

What Feifei referred to as Dae Jang Geum is a Korean TV series currently airing on the Hunan Satellite Television Network. Also known as The Great Jang Geum or Jewel in the Palace, Dae Jang Geum is a 2003 television soap opera produced by South Korean TV channel MBC, winning the highest ratings in South Korean television history at 54 per cent. It has been sweeping across much of the Chinese-speaking world, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese communities in San Francisco, Chicago, as well as in Malaysia.

On the Chinese mainland, it proved to be on another good run, with an average rating of 8.6 percent on its debut, which ranked it as the most watched TV program in the country's 12 biggest cities during its time period.

The big hit, starring the famous South Korean actress Lee Young-Ae, tells the true story of Jang-Geum, the first female royal physician who lived in ancient southern Korea, with its main theme being the heroine's perseverance against a backdrop of traditional Korean culture, such as its royal court cuisine and medicine.

"Korea wave," or "Han liu" in Chinese, refers to the popularity of Korean pop music, TV dramas, movies, fashion, food, and celebrities in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and other regions in Asia. The term "Korea Wave" was first used by the Chinese press in the late 1990s, when Korean TV dramas and Chinese-language remakes of Korean pop music began to gain ground in mainland China and Hong Kong. As we all witness, it's recently reached a new climax with the airing of Dae Jang Geum.

However, the Dae Jang Geum phenomenon is not only about this formidable Korea Wave, or the Hunan TV station, renowned for its recently concluded TV singing contest Super Girls--because it is not its only promoter. CCTV, China's state-owned television monopoly, started the tradition of importing Korean TV series as early as 1997 when it aired a family-themed series called What is Love. Last year, Miss Mermaid, another family-themed long-running Korean TV series, with a rating of 1.63 percent on CCTV-8, was widely considered a miracle for its after midnight broadcasting period, which usually receives extremely low ratings. It topped the most watched TV series' list on its second re-run on CCTV-1 over the past summer vacation.

Right now, in the same time slot as Hunan TV's showing of Dae Jang Geum, CCTV is passionately broadcasting Be Strong, Geum-Soon, a family-themed TV drama about a young widow's strength in the face of misfortune and her steadfast determination for a better life, who is regarded by the audience as the modern version of Jang-Geum. In spite of the intense pressure from Dae Jang Geum, Be Strong, Geum-Soon is also very well received by the Chinese audience, especially among elder women.

China is not alone in the heartland of the Korea Wave; so is Japan, Vietnam, and many other Asian countries. An article from a Japanese newspaper began like this, "Korean actor Bae Yong-joon did what some of his countrymen have dreamed of for decades: He conquered Japan." Bae Yong-joon is the hero of a Korean TV drama called Winter Sonata, which scored huge ratings and drew a large group of wannabes in Japan, including Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
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One day after work, you are invited by a friend to a restaurant featuring Korean cuisine. She suggests going for a Korean movie after the meal. You hear Hope, the theme music for Dae Jang Geum from a record shop on the way. At a street corner, a teenager with Korean style baggy trousers playing on a skateboard bumps into you. Then, you wonder, how come everything in one's daily life has turned Korean all of a sudden?

Experts offer several reasons for the Korea Wave phenomenon. Among them are the facts that most Asian countries share Confucian culture, that Korean culture professes nonviolence, and that the quality of Korean culture and communications have increased sharply in the past few years. In other words, fans embrace Korean cultural products because they convey similar Asian cultural sentiments in sophisticated packages.

But the interesting point here is that China is the very birthplace of Asian culture centering on Confucianism, which almost all Asian countries look up to. In Dae Jang-geum, the heroine learned Chinese classics and Chinese characters as a child and later studied traditional Chinese medical science to be a physician.

Liu Changle, the board director of Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV, said, "What South Korea does is to sell the essence of our culture to us. It is as if the user is charging the inventor."

Yin Hong, a professor with Tsinghua University explained, "The Chinese culture and the Korean culture overlap in many ways, which lays the foundation for mutual communication. On the other hand, compared with Korean pop culture which had early on borrowed good elements of Western culture, Chinese pop culture lacks originality, a weak point at which Korean pop culture breaks through."

"Our generation is fond of such family-themed Korean TV series because the stories remind us of the past and the traditional ethical values people adhered to at our time, which we cannot find in our domestic TV and theatres," a retiree from Beijing said.

"Of course I know the pure perfect love conceived in South Korean TV dramas is impossible in reality. But I just can not stop dreaming about it," said Chen Ying, a big fan in her twenties who indulges in South Korean romances day and night. "Compared to the instant love in Western movies and TV dramas and even in contemporary Chinese ones, I prefer the implicit way of love in South Korean dramas," she added.

At the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2002, renowned Chinese film director Feng Xiaogang told the audience, "As a filmmaker, I have to say we all need to be vigilant of the fact that Korean films are coming. We must spare no efforts to catch up with them."

Feng's words deserve serious thought. Three years later, also in Shanghai, South Korea was the biggest winner at the Shanghai International TV Festival, having been awarded the top honor, "Best TV drama," and successfully sold dozens of films and TV dramas to China. At the festival, China bought one hundred million RMB worth of programming while selling only 80 million RMB worth, showing an obvious trade deficit between China and foreign producers.

Despite the traditional cultural atmosphere featuring truth, goodness, fidelity, solidarity and patriotism, the success of South Korean drama productions also owes to their televisual technique, screenwriting, genre distinctiveness and popular stars, all areas in which Chinese productions lag behind. The Korean Prime Minister once said in a televised interview with CCTV that "Korean TV producers regard TV dramas as refining artistic works. They pursue every bit of perfection."

However, whenever you turn on the TV you will find it brimming over with Chinese dramas which are mainly concerned with conspiracies, corruption, crime and indecent affairs, or emperors and princes' lives in ancient dynasties. On September 12, China's People's Daily reported that several TV dramas were denied the license of airing due to their low taste in theme and low quality of production. Most of these TV dramas are about royal families' private life.

"Korea Wave helps us to discover a new market demand," Phoenix TV's Liu Changle said, "The audience is actually longing for products featuring traditional culture. But what we provided them before is so scarce and monotonous."

Zhang Xinjian, the deputy director of the culture market department with the Ministry of Culture (MOC), said China is not sophisticated in developing and marketing its cultural products.

"Most exported Chinese TV plays are old fashioned and poorly packaged by international standards, which doom them to fail," he said.

For ordinary Chinese audiences, their explanation of the difficulty of Chinese television programs entering foreign markets is that Chinese television shows focus narrowly on national and local affairs, instead of taking a broader view of humanity. "However, it's only by adopting a universal perspective that a TV drama can attract people from different backgrounds," said Zhang Chen, a college student who turned his interest in TV into his major.

In 2004, overseas sales of Chinese television series amounted to 100 million RMB. But the series sold overseas were, in the main, those adapted from the four classic works of Chinese literature.

Since 1996, China's copyright imports have increased 57 percent annually, compared with a sluggish increase rate for exports. In 2003, the ratio of copyright import and export reached a record high of 10.3:1, the Yearbook of China's Publishing Industry 2004 said.

A scholar from Hong Kong observed that Dae Jang Geum is a political declaration of South Korea's rise in East Asia and a cultural ID card for Korea to walk in the world arena boastfully. He believes its aim is to compete with China for the right to explain the essence of Confucianism.

Ma Xiangwu, a professor with Renmin University of China, who was a visiting scholar in South Korea for two years, is more optimistic. "Compared with Korean culture, Chinese traditional culture has accumulated over longer years. Besides, Chinese culture has the tradition of adopting the good points of other excellent cultures to make self-improvements," he said. "I believe with the further development of Chinese culture, the economical progress of China and the strengthening of China's national power, Korea Wave will ultimately be marginalized or cleared up in China."

CHINA, INTERNATIONAL, COMMENTARY: Visiting Yasakuni Shrine: Enjoyable for Japanese Prime Minister?

By Julia Zhu

With the denouncement of China and South Korea and criticism from fellow Japanese ringing in his ears, Junichiro Koizumi, in his black suit, calmly paid his visit to Yasakuni shrine on the morning of October 17th, the fifth time since he became Japanese Prime Minister.

Few could fully understand why Koizumi made such a move at a time of heightening diplomatic tension. He has insisted that he did not mean to glorify war but to pray for peace by paying homage to Yasukuni shrine, and that those visits are personal. But would the public consider it personal simply because he took the public entrance?

During an interview by the Times, Koizumi assumed that China did not welcome a growth in Japan's political influence with reference to China's opposition to Japan becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council. But assumptions are assumptions. Personally, I think there is good reason for the Chinese government to attempt to actually check Japan's influence. Japanese officials haven't demonstrated enough sincerity, judging from the case of the textbook revisions or many other offensive episodes, and thus failed to win trust from its neighbors. After all, how can one trust someone who is constantly breaking his promise, even if he poses as a friend all the time?

As for his fifth visit to Yasakuni shrine where the top-level war criminals of WWII are remembered, I think there are better explanations.

First, it is for Koizumi's political purpose. As we all know, ever since he was running for ruling party president in 2001, he pledged to make the pilgrimages. Doubtlessly this action helped him gain the support from the powerful military veterans. His decision of repeatedly visiting the shrine despite the diplomatic disputes demonstrate an unwavering stance welcomed by many voters as a sign of strong leadership. The success of the Liberal Democratic Party in the snap elections on September 11 no doubt inspired him to continue the strategy. Though it may freeze Japan's already chilly relations with its neighbors and bring consequent damage to economic relations--even though the annual trade between China and Japan is valued at $212 billion--for Koizumi, it's still worth a try!

Secondly, the visits also serve diplomatic purposes. So far, Japan has made little progress in many diplomatic events and aroused strong hostility not only in China and South Korean, but also in Russian over land disputes. Its influence on the Six-party Talks over denuclearization of Korean Peninsula turned out to be limited. With the awkward circumstance of the 60th anniversary of the victory of WWII, there's a need for the Japanese government to avert its citizens' eyes while undermining the influence of China, North Korea and South Korea. And a visit to Yasakuni shrine simply cracks all of these.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in offering sincere condolences to the war dead from Japan and other parts of the world, and none of us have the right to meddle with matters of Japanese culture. Yet the question is: did Koizumi do it simply for this reason?

After so much hurt done and so many objections raised, what interests me greatly is that Koizumi could calmly talk about retiring to his personal life. In the Times interview he said: "When you are not prime minister, there are many ways to enjoy yourself." But unfortunately, he still is.

CHINA, NATIONAL, ARTS, Movie Review: March of the Penguins: Love Finds Its Way in the Frozen World

By Yu Zhijuan

There is no lethal fighting and shooting, no evil persons conspiring to govern the whole universe, no young lady attempting to kill her husband. This summer, the French director Luc Jacquet's documentary La Marche de L'empereur (English Title: March of the Penguins) brought to us a cinematic experience that is completely different from other current movies. It recorded the authentic life of emperor penguins--the process of their growth, mating and reproduction. The shot of the father penguin challenging the extreme cold and starvation to guard the egg touches even the heart of stone. Just like the narrator of this documentary said, "In the harshest place on Earth love finds a way."

In China, the image of a cute boy penguin with a red scarf around his neck (as the symbol of a popular chatting tool TengxunQQ on the Internet) has been impressed on youths' mind; however, few of them really know penguins and their customary way of life. Luc Jacquet gives audiences a vivid biological lesson on the Emperor Penguin--the largest of its kind. Penguins are birds but cannot fly. They can dive in the sea and live on the ice. They can walk upon their feet and slide with their bellies. In winter, other birds fly to the south; in contrast, penguins leave the warm seawater for the bleak Antarctic continent to commence their long march.

The documentary begins with a bird's-eye view of the snow-covered Antarctic region. While listening to Emilie Simon's song "Only white, I think it is cold outside," audiences might think of wearing more clothes. The first shot of the film is deliberately blurred, so a line of penguins waddling may be mistakenly regarded as some pilgrims walking across the desert. Suddenly, a penguin pops out of the ocean onto the ice sheet and everything becomes visually clear. The penguin spreads its wings and shows its body. Every movement of its plump body reminds audiences of Charles Chaplin's funny gestures.

In succession, more and more penguins assemble from far and near. They all head towards a fixed place to find a mate and have babies. When thousands of them collect there, the occasion seems to be uncontrollable and they all make strange sounds like "everybody, let's party!" Through courtship dancing and singing, male and female penguins try to gain their lover's heart. In particular, a pair of lovers become the leading actor and actress of the film. They tenderly kiss each other and are deeply immersed in the happiness of love. Once they become a couple, they begin to take the responsibility of raising up their seed.

Several days later, the frozen world witnesses the naissance of new lives. The mother penguin has exhausted all her energy. She has to return to the sea as soon as possible to store food for her baby. Thus she passes with great care the unhatched egg to her spouse, and the father starts to guard it.

Within about 2 months, the father has nothing to eat and must constantly fight against the blizzard. He puts the egg above his feet and warms it with his belly. But still, facing the icy storm, he needs the help of his group. When snowflakes are rolling with the gale, penguins tightly keep close to each other with their backs exposed to the wind. After an interval, penguins inside the circle voluntarily replace the outside ones.

While the father is tested by extreme hunger and artic winds, the mother is affronted with the attack of seals in the ocean. Against the odds, both of the protagonists survive. What is more exciting is that their chick begins to reveal his head from out of the shell!

The mother penguin finally finishes her first journey and comes back to find the waiting father and son. The penguin family gets a brief reunion. Now it is the father's turn to return to the ocean to have food, since these days' lack of food have made him lose half of his weight. Before departing, the father doesn't forget to ask his kid to memorize his voice for identification in the future.

With mother penguin's nurturing, the infant grows up day by day. He learns to walk, endure the storm and be independent. Mother's pouch seems too small for him to stay now. His plume gradually turns from gray to black and white and someday he will be as strong as his father.

March of the Penguins was released in American theaters in June 2005. Within a single day the penguins earned more at the box-office than War of the Worlds. The penguins easily defeated Tom Cruise! It sounds impossible. But the master of the documentary Luc Jacquet made it true.

Most Chinese audiences, even unfamiliar with this French filmmaker's name, must be acquainted with his two other works Microcosmos and Winged Migration. Due to Luc Jacquet's passion towards biology and filmmaking, people have a chance to access nature and discover a beautiful and mysterious world. Through his camera, even the mosquito becomes a luxurious star! After 12 years' preparation and 13 months' shooting at the South Pole, Luc Jacquet and his crew conquered many difficulties and finally managed to present the panorama of the penguin kingdom to audiences around the world.

The film market this summer was flooded with war movies represented by Star Wars III followed by War of the Worlds. When people turn on their TV sets, most of the programs they see are about guns and shooting for the sake of observing WW II. The March of the Penguins is just like a cold dish after enough chafing dishes. It brings to audiences the sense of coolness, quietness and peacefulness, and it takes people back to the world of love and reason.

In spite of some inciting asides such as "La vie, si belle" and "de plus en plus fort, de plus en plus fort"(respectively used to describe the egg and storm), the film could still be viewed as an unadorned morality tale. Compared with human cruelty and selfishness, these clumsy creatures incarnate love, sacrifice and responsibility. Although almost starving to death, the father penguin spit from out his stomach the remains of food to feed the chick; when the storm is coming, all penguins huddle together to get warm; the sad penguin mother wailing for her abortive child. All these make people contemplate and self-examine.

People nowadays work under great pressure to support families and unconsciously quicken the tempo of life. "I cannot wait"--the phrase is heard daily. Once audiences enter the cinema and watch these penguins, they have to slow down their pace and learn to wait. They need to wait patiently to see the birth of the chick, the termination of the storm and the boy penguins becoming adults.

The documentary Microcosmos directed by Luc Jacquet is also a classical example. In the colorful world of insects, an hour is passed like a day and a day is lived through like a year! People who have read the book Souvenir Entomologiques by Jean Henri Fabre must have experienced the long wait for the ants transporting food to their nest and a pupa turning to become a butterfly. In Luc Jacquet's films, audiences open their curious eyes to wait for the slightest changes of the world and the miracles to happen.

Hardly anyone could refuse these fragile creatures. Even hunters viewing the abortive chick would show their sympathy. Love of animals, human beings and the whole universe is the eternal theme. It is reported that in Shanghai, some mothers utilized The Penguins as material for prenatal instruction. Hopefully love can find its way in the following generation and every corner of the world.

CHINA, NATIONAL, NEWS: Among Her Relics, The Story of a Murdered Prostitute

By Hou Dong

On September 4th, around twelve-thirty at night, on a double bed in room 302 on East Street, she lay there, stark naked, with her tongue and eyes popping out, an obvious purple mark around her neck, and a black-and-blue face. She was dead.

The irrational passion of a customer cost the life of Ms Gou the prostitute; at the age of 24, she was strangled to death. The crime scene was horrific. A cotton quilt covered the body. Not far from the head of the bed, under the used tissues, a condom was found. The room had the look of being rummaged; it was the place where she did her business.

"She was seen by a witness go into that house with a rural laborer. He was short and bony, with trousers tucked into his socks. The suspect is still at large. It is an apparent murder," said a police officer.

When the police investigated and tidied up Gou's relics, a diary drew everyone's attention. In it she depicted in detail how deeply she loved her husband, how much she missed him; it displayed her moods, as well as things that had happened between her and her husband.

Between the lines, with each word, the deep love she had for her husband was clearly felt. The diary recorded things from June 13 to August 15. All together there were 60 pages. Almost each piece opened with "My dear husband." In the diary she expressed her beautiful wish to have an extraordinary house, a bunch of loveable children, a whole family living an affluent life together, happy forever.

Judging from the diary, the center of her spiritual life was her husband. Also, apart from the diary, in one big envelope, there were nearly 1000 paper-fold handcrafted hearts made by her. On each one there were words such as "miss you," "kiss you," "love you," along with some other cute expressions.


A reporter discovered that she also recorded in detail her daily disbursements: "110 Yuan for meals, 18 Yuan for clothing, 21 Yuan for make-up..." According to the sketchy statistics, on average, she spent only 270 Yuan a month, which barely reached the lowest social security standard of a medium-sized city.

The diary shocked even the experienced chief police officer, a specialist in the study of psychology within special groups of people, "Who would think a prostitute could bear so deep a love and have so beautiful a life dream, meanwhile leading such an impoverished life?"


Xiao Lin, the husband of Ms Gou, the very one she loved, said as he sobbed: "If there is a future life...I will still have her as my wife." The thin, pale man, unable to restrain his tears, cried his heart out. When asked whether he knew his wife was working as a prostitute, sighing heavily and with a bitter expression, he said yes. "We had to pay our debts...we had to find the quickest way."

Xiaolin and Ms Gou met May 2003 in a supermarket where she worked as a sales clerk and he as a security guard. In the natural order of things, they fell in love. In February 2004, they got married. They had to face the severe realities of life. The wedding ceremony cost nearly 30,000 Yuan, which, to a poor family, is too large an amount of money so they had to borrow from relatives and friends.

To pay the debt, Xiaolin's father went to carry stone, his younger brother went to Beijing to work as a security guard, his wife went to Lanzhou to seek employment, leaving him and his mother to do the farm work. According to Xiaolin, their home was in a small mountain village named Huachi--a 10 square-meter hut with only one bed and a table.

Ms Gou's mother-in-law, who arrived at the murder scene with her son shortly after they received the phone call from the police, choking with tears, told the reporter: "She was kind to everyone...always had a big smile on her face. She had a mild temper...energetic and optimistic. We all liked her so much. I was expecting my grandson next year...."

Ms Gou was brought by a fellow villager to a 'beauty salon' to work, it was a brothel; there she became a prostitute. She was once caught prostituting herself by the police. When Xiaolin received the phone call from the police station, it was the first time he learned what his wife really did in Lanzhou. He said at that moment he collapsed.

On the one hand he was angry with his wife for betraying him physically, on the other, he understood why his wife chose to do it. Finally, he gave in to the hard reality and the heavy debt. Owing to her good performance in prison, her 6-month sentence was commuted to 4 months. With her husband's acquiescence, she went back to her work.

Then a customer ended all of her diary dreams--a beautiful house, a bunch of loveable children, a happy family living together forever, were not to be for Ms Guo the prostitute.

CHINA, NATIONAL, EDUCATION, Analysis: The Age of Graduate Study?

By Li Chen

Graduate study, which is supposed to be a period of academic study furthering research in a certain subject by someone who has proved to have some research ability, is now considered as an exclusive way of getting a good-paying job in today's China. Apparently, students with graduate degrees are more likely to get better positions compared with "ordinary" students.

So there is no surprise why there are so many undergraduate students devoting themselves to the entrance exam for graduate study right after their first year of college life, some even from the beginning of the first year, by doing a lot of memorizing. Hence, when asked about some basic ideas in their own major, many of them are not willing to express their points; they are either not interested or have nothing to talk about, but when asked the analysis of a political issue or some exam-styled English reading assignments, they get totally involved. Then, what is the point of undergraduate study, anyway? How about we just start with special exam-training schools and get rid of those boring and time-wasting undergraduate majors? Actually, such training schools in China have made a great fortune over the last three years due to this graduate study heat.

Two months ago, I went to Shanghai Foreign Studies University to take an interpreting test. Since it was my first trip to that famous metropolis, I went there five days before the test day hoping to see everything I could of that charming city; I stayed in a dorm with a friend who is a graduate student there. Even though I went out most of my stay in Shanghai, I think I still know what those guys in the dorm are doing everyday: surfing on line, playing video games, and that's all.

To be frank, I was a bit confused and asked one of them if they have any paper assignments or reading assignments. Surprisingly, they don't have much of that stuff and according to one of them the key to making sure you have your paper passed is to keep on good terms with your professors who can also, by the way, help you a lot in your future job hunting. He added that he himself does not think he has learned anything that will really help his performance in his future job.

I started to ask myself, if a graduate title can guarantee a better job in the future, then what is the point of studying if the knowledge and skills I acquire during my graduate years have nothing to do with my future career? Is it merely a graduate diploma that can get me the job? I just cannot imagine I will be in a vice CEO position of a nationally-owned telecommunication company when I am a Chinese major who knows nothing about economy just because I received a graduate degree in Chinese classics appreciation! However, according to the latest statistics, most students with graduate degrees are not doing jobs that require their graduate degree knowledge.

A 26-year old Chinese girl had sex with a professor at Beijing Transportation University to ensure her success with the entrance test paper in politics; afterwards her conscience told her it was wrong and ridiculous. How many girls have done that in the pursuit of their graduate study dreams? And how many have realized how ridiculous it is? It's high time to stop this unreasonable craziness and get back to the study of our major.

CHINA, ARTS, Book Review: Why Can't He Speak Out His Love?

By Julia Zhu

When reading Kazuo Ishiguro's "The remains of the day," I simply cannot stop myself from being mad at Stevens: is he a man? How can he be such a jerk who dares not speak out his compassion for the one he loves and even tries everything he can to hide it?

It's really hard for me to understand him. As described in the novel, he pretended not to care about Miss Kenton's constant date though he cared a lot about it; he wished her happy when informed of the news of her marriage though his heart was bleeding; he went away with so-called dignity from her door though he knew behind that door she was crying and deep in his heart he wanted to comfort her; and finally, he again "easily" let all his feeling go without speaking it out for a last gamble when Miss Kenton told him there was no turning back.

Why is he so afraid of exposing his true feelings? There seems to be the infallible reason: he must be honest and dignified for his profession, he must be a good butler.

But what comes of it? It's not only those who he loves deeply going away, but also his own happiness and his precious youth. To keep a so-called dignity with his job and to show his respect and loyalty for his lord Darlington, he left his father, who was seriously ill, to serve the most ignorant guests and even miss the chance to see him for the last time; he felt dignified and happy when Darlington spared a little concern for him though he was mocked and humiliated by his employer's visitors; he cared nothing about Miss Kenton's feelings, wrapping himself tightly for fear that there was something improper; he carried out Darlington's order of firing the two black servants without any further presentation of his own opinion...

Interestingly, when reading the book, I constantly thought of a Chinese TV series I watched at the beginning of this semester: Jin Zhi Yu Nie. In this series, which was set in the Qing Dynasty, there is also a palace servant whose fate is somewhat similar to Stevens. Because of her poor family background, there is scarcely any way for her to get to a higher position. What she wishes for is to wait until the end of the service period and spend the rest of her life with her grandmother. Yet the complicated power struggle among the harems forced her to stay. Even when her Mr. Right appeared and waited for her to leave her position, she stayed first for loyalty to master and then for revenge against her grandmother. The similarity between An Qian (the servant’s name) and Stevens is that both of them dare not to speak out their love for so-called loyalty (The difference is clear though--one is forced to at first, but the other is doing it out of his own will).

My purpose in comparing the two characters is just to show their silliness. Indeed, there are many critical moments in our life, many difficult decisions for us to make, and many hard situations where we have no choice, but the most important thing, as far as I am concerned, is that we should have the courage to pursue our own happiness or at least choose to do things we won't be regretful for in our future life. An Qian died in the end with regret, and clearly Stevens was also woeful for missing the once-in-a-lifetime chance to express himself. I couldn't help asking myself: is what they did worthwhile?

But Stevens is right to say that "one can't be forever dwelling on what might have been and shouldn't keep looking back all the time." Therefore, let's just remember: as our life is short, there is little time for us to hesitate or regret. Whenever, wherever, be proud of yourself to be in possession of the courage to expose your true self and speak out love to the one you love.

CHINA, NATIONAL NEWS: When Ghosts Kill, Who is to Blame?

By Lianne Li

Yu Yiang heard something filthy. So he picked up a kitchen knife and slashed his wife to death in her sleep for fear that she might be hurt. Then he kindled some clothing to burn down the house to get rid of someone he believed to be on his roof.

A few months ago, with a stick in hand, Li Changming struck a road maintenance worker dead on the street. When interrogated by the police, he insisted that he was innocent of the crime, for his brain was completely washed out.

So was Zeng Qunfu's, who killed two children in his village two years earlier.

They are now locked behind the steel bars of a lunatic asylum in southwestern Shunfu county, Sichuan province. Doctors have diagnosed the ghosts in their minds as severe schizophrenia, and treated them with 51 other mentally ill patients, most of whom were also confined for violent episodes.

There are at least 16 million people with severe mental illness in China, according to the latest numbers released by authorities in a survey conducted in 1992. Only 20% of them will receive timely treatment, leaving the vast majority liable to bring harm to themselves and other people.

The families of these mentally ill people are responsible for monitoring them, based on the law. But in many cases, the families are unable to take care of them.

"We cannot read, and know nothing about it. We thought he was well because he had been treated," said the mother of Yu Yiang. "He didn't take his medicine. When we told him to, he'd piss off. We never thought this could recur."

While his three sisters were working in the city, Zeng Qunfu was left with his elderly parents, who could not restrain him. He roamed about his village, pounding on the doors of neighbors for nothing. The village head shrugged off complaints, saying that he could do little with loonies.

But things only get worse if the family can't handle the patients properly.

In the fourth year of his marriage, Ling Chuang was inflicted with bipolar affective disorder. His wife, Yu Ying lived in horror ever since. The awful temper of Ling often brought her punches and kicks. One night in March 2004, in the middle of her husband's abuse, she was nearly strangled to death. A decision was set in her mind: after 18 years of abuse, she and her son were going to live. Later that night, she strangled her husband with an electrical wire when he was sound asleep. For that act of desperation, she was imprisoned.

"Mentally ill people lapse from the society, which makes it difficult to treat them because they need to adjust to social life in a way that brings the least harm to themselves and their families," said Sun Dongdong, a law professor at Peking University. "Actually, the chances that mentally ill people will commit crimes are much less than ordinary criminals," Professor Sun pointed out. "So why wouldn't we tolerate them? It is the responsibility of the families to take custody. However, when their families are unable to handle them, the government should take the responsibility."

In countries like France and Germany, doctors visit families with mentally ill patients regularly and report their acts of violence in time to enforce treatment. Sweden has set up mental institutions in communities to take care of mental illness at all levels. However, China has not coped with the problem effectively. There are no concrete laws or regulations regarding mental health at present. In some rural areas, the officials scarcely deal with the problem; some even have little knowledge of the state of mental patients in their region.

"The government should ensure that communities provide necessary medical care and protect their safety," Professor Sun concluded.